2026 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

What's a post-doc to do? Guiding principles for team members temporarily managing a lab

Presented at Faculty Development Division (FDD) Technical Session 3: Mentorship, Career Pathways, and Professional Growth

Running a research lab is a complex and time-consuming endeavor, with responsibilities including managing multiple projects and the associated administrative tasks; advising and mentoring graduate students; and completing your own research. There is, however, little to no education or training for those who hope to become a Principal Investigator on how to effectively manage all of the tasks associated with running a research lab. In the event that a PI must be absent for an extended period of time, this lack of training can be especially challenging for postdoctoral scholars when tasked with managing their PI’s research team, as there are few resources to leverage and support the successful management of this task. The purpose of this Lessons Learned paper is to share the guiding principles that a postdoctoral scholar and doctoral student discovered when leading a research lab while their PI was on leave. To generate these guiding principles, after the PI returned, the authors revisited and reflected on their time leading the lab and found that identifying your values as a leader; communicating and requesting expectations both with individuals and the larger research team; and acknowledging your primary goal while in charge is critical. Our hope in sharing these lessons learned is twofold: primarily, that postdoctoral scholars and graduate students who may be tasked with running a lab for a period of time have a starting point and some foundational knowledge about how to approach such a large endeavor; and secondarily, that the faculty who may need their postdoctoral scholars or graduate students to manage their research teams (re)consider training their graduate students and post-doctoral scholars on managing a research lab.

Authors

Dr. Danielle Vegas Lewis http://orcid.org/0000-0001-7266-6328 University at Buffalo [biography]

Dr. Danielle Vegas Lewis is currently a Postdoctoral Associate in the Department of Engineering Education at the University at Buffalo. Her research agenda aims to understand and disrupt the ways in which socially constructed identities allow for the reproduction of social inequality, with a focus on understanding the ways institutions of higher education and other social structures challenge or uphold hegemonic environments in which majority populations accumulate power that harms students underrepresented in certain contexts.
Lorna Treffert University at Buffalo, The State University of New York [biography]

Lorna Treffert is a 3rd year Ph.D. candidate in Engineering Education at the University at Buffalo. She recieved her bachelors and masters in Industrial and Systems Engineering from the University of Tennessee - Knoxville. Her research interests include exploring the structural and interpersonal factors which promote intellectual risk taking within engineering and engineering education contexts.
Dr. Courtney June Faber http://orcid.org/0000-0001-9156-7616 University at Buffalo, The State University of New York [biography]

Courtney Faber, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor of Engineering Education at the University at Buffalo (UB). Prior to joining UB in August of 2023, she was a Research Associate Professor and Senior Lecturer in Engineering Fundamentals at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. She was also the Director of the Fundamentals of Engineering and Computing Teaching in Higher Education Certificate Program. Her research focuses on empowering engineering education scholars to be more effective at impacting transformational change in engineering and developing educational experiences that consider epistemic thinking. She develops and uses innovative research methods that allow for deep investigations of constructs such as epistemic thinking, identity, and agency. Dr. Faber has a B.S. in Bioengineering and a Ph.D. in Engineering and Science Education from Clemson University and a M.S. in Biomedical Engineering from Cornell University. Among other awards for her research, she was awarded a National Science Foundation CAREER Award in 2022 to study epistemic negotiations on interdisciplinary engineering education research teams.

Note

The full paper will be available to logged in and registered conference attendees once the conference starts on June 21, 2026, and to all visitors after the conference ends on June 24, 2026

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